Tziporah Malkah has spoken out about her “complicated” relationship with ex-fiance James Packer in a new interview on Seven’s Sunday Night.

The former model and actress, who shot to fame in the 1990s under the name Kate Fischer, opened up about the tumultuous relationship she embarked upon with the son of media tycoon Kerry Packer when she was at the height of her fame.

When she first met James, she told Sunday Night reporter Denham Hitchcock, she had just finished filming racy 1993 drama Sirens, her first film role.

“I run into him at a trendy Sydney nightspot. He congratulates me, he’s very kind and says ‘Would you like to go out for dinner?’,” she recalled.

From there, the pair saw each other casually, Packer taking “a couple of years” to ask her to date exclusively.

Kate and James in 1998.Source:News Limited

“I said no, I don’t want to be one-on-one with you. He was a little gobsmacked.”

But Malkah eventually relented — and she conceded that Packer’s lavish lifestyle was part of what attracted her.

“I found the lifestyle very exciting and dazzling. It wasn’t as if I had an open chequebook … I had an allowance per month,” she said of the couple’s finances.

She and Packer spent five years together, separating in 1998 after a two-year engagement.

“We had a great friendship, a really good friendship. There was love, but there was complications in that love, mainly because of my jealousy and my possessiveness,” she admitted.

Another complication: James’ often tortured relationship with his father Kerry.

James and father Kerry had a difficult relationship.Source:News Corp Australia

“Kerry would rage at him, for hours at a time. He never wanted to show me the extent of his upset, but sometimes I did sneak a look when he thought he was alone. He was in the shower, just standing there with the water running over his face. He’d been in there for 40 minutes … this was a daily occurrence. So I peeked in, and he was a mess,” she said.

James’ tumultuous love life has rarely left the tabloids in the two decades since he and Malkah split, with short-lived marriages to model Jodhi Meares (1999-2002) and Erica Baxter (2007-2013) and a brief, unlikely engagement to singer Mariah Carey in 2016.

Malkah said she had noticed a change in her ex’s choice of partner since his father died in 2005.

“The ones when Kerry was still alive were just sort of safe, then of course when Kerry died and he was ‘the man’, he could go after the world’s biggest diva (Carey).

“How exciting for him! He was finally off his father’s leash,” she said.